It’s a dirty job but someone has to do it
Chorus of dissent after police stop carol singers in car park Police have been criticised for disbanding an outdoor fundraising performance by carol singers in a quiet village. Four patrol cars swooped...
View ArticleA land battle and a sea battle – in a book about Beethoven
I’ve been reading a three-volume fictionalised life of Beethoven, by, of all people, John Suchet, whom most people probably know only as a television newsreader. The way Suchet tells the story,...
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News management means never having to say you’re sorry
What the BBC story looked like 41 minutes after it was published: The hashtag #FireGinaCarano trended on Twitter for hours following an anti-Semitic story the actress shared on her Instagram. The link...
View ArticleSpread the word
“Second translator of Amanda Gorman’s Joe Biden inauguration poem dumped”, reports the Times. A fresh controversy over translations of the poem read out at President Biden’s inauguration has erupted...
View ArticleCotswold Bloke: ‘No one would ever believe that world leaders would behave...
Cotswold Bloke writes, in a series of tweets which I have merged together into a piece of writing with paragraphs and added punctuation and whatnot instead of it being divided up into tweets, this: Got...
View ArticleSamizdata quote of the day
“There’s also the problem of, as our liberal friends would put it, power dynamics. At least when Stewart was battling the Bush administration, you could make the argument that liberalism was a minority...
View ArticleA flinching depiction
A Google search for the words “unflinching depiction” got me 57,100 hits. Not so long ago “unflinching” was only just edged out by “edgy” as a term of praise for a work of fiction. Novelists prided...
View ArticleRevoking an apology
Until yesterday Winston Marshall was a member of the English folk rock band Mumford & Sons. In this post on medium.com he explains why he is leaving: At the beginning of March I tweeted to American...
View ArticleTo call it “Project Cassandra” was hubris
As soon as I saw it I thought of psychohistory. I was not alone, judging from the most recommended comment to this fascinating Guardian article: ‘At first I thought, this is crazy’: the real-life plan...
View ArticleCame for tea, stayed for the rape: a beloved children’s classic re-analysed
They’ve come for the tiger. “Children’s book ‘The Tiger Who Came To Tea’ could lead to rape and harassment’ because it reinforces gender inequality that causes violence against women, campaigner...
View ArticleA review of the new James Bond film that I thoroughly agree with – SPOILER ALERT
Well, at last the new James Bond film has hit cinemas on both sides of the Atlantic. There may be countries where it is not yet on release, but it’s been out long enough I think for a commentary that...
View ArticleAdam Smith: Father of the Fringe
On Monday night I attended a screening of Dominic Frisby’s film Adam Smith: Father of the Fringe at the IEA. It is a documentary about how the government-subsidised Edinburgh Festival was usurped by...
View ArticleA shockingly misinformed tweet by Tim Worstall
Someone called sarahknapton tweeted, “I know lateral flow is important etc but all these millions of bits of plastic ending up in landfill every day makes me feel a bit ill.” Mr Worstall replied, “Umm,...
View ArticleSamizdata quote of the day
Not only is it impossible to find the climate change satire in Mr. McKay’s movie that he claims is there. Alas, there’s no market for parodying the aspects most in need of parody. Millions of us have...
View ArticleThe new “Reacher” series on Amazon Prime
I have been snaffling up the new series, Reacher, based on the hugely popular Jack Reacher novels of UK-born author Lee Child. They have become classics, as classic as the Travis McGee novels of John D...
View ArticleIf it is OK to hit someone who insults your wife, is it OK to hit someone who...
The controversy on Will Smith hitting Chris Rock after the latter made a distasteful joke about his wife’s hair loss is interesting because it cuts across party lines. Though most politicians have made...
View ArticleBoris Johnson’s evitable inevitable downfall
My paper paper and the online version of the Times have different headlines this morning. Royalty fills the paper, but online the focus has returned to the Commons: Politics live: Boris Johnson faces...
View ArticleSamizdata quote of the day
Only good stories matter, ‘representation’ should not be an objective in and of itself or daft things happen. That is why a super diverse cast in The Expanse works superbly but black elves in a Tolkien...
View ArticleOhh, Jeremy Corbyn
Remember this? “Glastonbury 2017: ‘Ohh Jeremy Corbyn’ chant sweeps festival as revellers get political” Last year, it was the universal disdain for the Brexit vote, myself waking up to megaphones...
View ArticleSamizdata quote of the day
Responding to his cancellation, Gilliam said it was “very sad that a great cultural institution like the Old Vic allowed itself to be intimidated into cancelling our production”. Likening the younger...
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